


the earth will provide

by wanderingwhaler



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Feral Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt needs to start being thankful for Jaskier is all I'm saying, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia is Bad at Apologies, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia is a Mess, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Soft Jaskier | Dandelion, no beta and bad tagging sorry, this is all over the place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26690062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingwhaler/pseuds/wanderingwhaler
Summary: Incidentally, and it was really just a small, tiny little thing that didn’t really need to be brought up because really… incidentally. Jaskier was a little bit blessed. It may or may not be extremely relevant that he was favored (loved, treasured, adored) by the Earth due to the tiny fact that he was a product of it. In a much more literal sense than the average townsfolk could say they were ‘from the earth.’ Even the capitalization was different. Jaskier was from the Earth.A story about Jaskier having the favor of the Earth and Geralt getting a crash course in behavior modification and emotional literacy.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 17
Kudos: 96





	the earth will provide

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about this for months and it finally erupted out of me like a freak storm in one sitting. I can't help it. I didn't edit it, proofread it, nothing. This is like, 80% for me to stop obsessing over and 20% out of desperate hope someone else might also like the premise. There is zero continuity of writing style because that's how I roll. I don't have flow. I have excessive comma usage. And it's just....all over the place.

Geralt, being of true strong of heart and dumb of ass status, was oblivious to most things not directly related to monsters or weaponry. A man with his hand on the hilt of his sword would garner just as much attention as an angry striga because _constant vigilance_ wasn’t just a phrase Vesemir used to hurl towards the boys at Kaer Morhen, alternating commands with chunks of bricks taken from the crumbling exterior ( _if you can dodge a brick, you can dodge a sword)_. No, Geralt was constantly vigilant for monster and weapons; he was just not too observant on the _good_ things around him.

So Jaskier very quickly decided he’d be Geralt’s very own spoken gratitude journal. If Geralt was too morose and short-sighted (danger-sighted?) to see the little things in life that made it all worth living, Jaskier would just have to speak the words and the gratitude into existence for him. So he began to daintily, overbearingly, overwhelmingly sprinkle in some positivity.

“It’s a marvelous day out today! No rain!” Jaskier would exalt.

“Why there’s a ring of that delightfully orange mushroom that you sold for a profit a couple towns back. How lucky!” Jaskier would say, before prancing over to the mushrooms to collect the bounty. Geralt would vault from Roach to stop Jaskier’s bare hands from touching the sticky caps.

“I’m just so very grateful to have a companion like you, Geralt,” Jaskier would say, softly over the banked fire, when Geralt needed quiet while the potions took its due out of Geralt’s shaking body.

The point being, Jaskier tried to bring about gratitude at least five times a day. He tallied it and everything alongside his scribbled notes for songs and poems and embarrassingly, erotica that he sold over winter in Oxenfurt under the pen name, Richard Cox. Jaskier had already promised himself that he’d burn all his notebooks and possibly himself if Geralt ever came close to discovering that little secret, even if the royalties paid for quite a bit of Geralt’s supplies in the spring.

Incidentally, and it was really just a small, tiny little thing that didn’t really need to be brought up because really… incidentally. Jaskier was a little bit blessed. It may or may not be extremely relevant that he was favored (loved, treasured, adored) by the Earth due to the tiny fact that he was a product of it. In a much more literal sense than the average townsfolk could say they were ‘from the earth.’ Even the capitalization was different. Jaskier was from the Earth.

It goes like this. Once upon a time, a woman needed a child. Not because she wanted to be a mother; rather it was because otherwise the Viscount would behead her for failing to produce an heir before moving on to the next young semi-royal maiden that might have better luck doing anything productive with his rotten seed. So the woman went into the woods and dug a hole into the ground. She was respectful. She didn’t break any roots and she didn’t kill any animal or insect or writhing thing she uncovered. She bled from her nails and the scratches that opened up along her delicate hands. She cried from exhaustion and fear before she cried with determination and out of joy of her own unknown strength (how could she have known she could be so strong; she was doing so much and all for herself; she loved herself, she loved herself, she wanted to live, oh gods, out of love for herself).

She gave what she had to the ground until she had a hole under the thickest layer of surface roots webbed together big enough to kneel within. She kneeled and prayed for a day. She prayed for a son to save her life. The son wouldn’t be hers and she wouldn’t keep the son from the Earth if the Earth was so kind as to give her this gift. She would bear the child; bear the burden. She would give the child everything until the child was ready to fulfill whatever destiny might await it, being of Earth.

The roots above her shivered and rained dirt onto the Viscount’s wife. They parted and dipped down, lifted the woman up in an embrace and set her back among the leaves and debris of a healthy, living forest. She was heard and she was pregnant.

The child was born, a male. The woman – the mother now – the mother insisted that she give birth in the garden and not the protected tower of the keep. The boy was named after the flowers he was born upon. _Buttercup. Jaskier_.

That was the story Jaskier had been hearing his whole life, sang to him by his mother who was clever enough to disguise the truth of it all with a plausible fable. Even Jaskier thought it was nothing but a nursery rhyme until he grew old enough to realize that he never tripped over a stone or branch. When riding his horse, he’d fall only onto the softest patches of moss, no matter whether he had been surrounded by hard packed dirt before he left the saddle. He found fruit in abundance in trees and along vines, no matter the season. The old and tired animals of the forest would come lay at his feet, where he could comfort them and sing to them of their long lives and contributions to Earth until they faded and he would use everything he could out of respect and distribute the rest.

Monsters were not something that listened to Earth and consequently had no affinity towards Jaskier. He had learned that one rather unpleasantly through a forktail when he was just a boy. Overall, his young life was one fulfilled by music and nature. He decided to become a travelling bard and for that he’d need to go to Oxenfurt for training.

His feet itched at Oxenfurt but he _wanted_ to be good. He wanted to be loved by the people. He felt so loved by Earth and so connected but he wanted to feel that love with people as well. He made friends and enemies; he had lovers. He left Oxenfurt.

He met Geralt.

He didn’t tell Geralt. But Geralt never asked. And if Jaskier asked his Earth-mother-giver for help on behalf of Geralt? Well, that’s something that’s hard to explain anyway. Jaskier took care to express his gratitude (and Geralt’s) for what he knew were gifts. A lone apple tree, laden with fruit, when Roach had kicked a bandit away from Jaskier hours earlier. An old stag walking purposely in front of Geralt’s bow when Jaskier insisted that Geralt needed more than _thrice-damned stale bread_ _and a half a walnut, you absolute walnut._

Jaskier didn’t really know what traveling was like without himself, being that he was himself and incapable of splitting apart Jaskier-the-traveling-bard and Jaskier-beloved-by-Earth, but he knew enough from tales of talkative drunks and fellow travelers he met on the road that the road could be tough. Rivers could flood and block the way. Felled trees and overgrowth could make a path invisible. Water could disappear from the surface and leave a man to thirst away in what he remembered was once a creek bed. He knew enough that for all the bitching of his grumpy witcher that on the whole, traveling with him was easier. Even if Geralt, dumb and thickheaded Geralt, didn’t see it.

“Oh my,” Jaskier would call from off the path, standing in the midst of a blackberry patch, “what a fortunate coincidence! Geralt, it’s wonderful we found this amongst all this _ice_ and _snow_. Really, let’s give a big thanks to nature for offering up these magnificent berries.”

“Magic. Don’t eat them.” Geralt would grunt, grumpily.

Jaskier would scoff, dramatically. He’d pick a satchel full of the berries, murmur a thanks to Earth-mother-provider, before scurrying after Geralt once again. After he ate half the bag and didn’t turn blue or explode with wasps or any other nonsense and Geralt had sniffed the bag four times over and surreptitiously pressed his medallion to a berry or two, Geralt would eventually partake.

They had a good system going.

Up until, of course, “If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.”

***

From Earth-mother-protector’s perspective, it went something like this:

_‘Pain’, from my child._

_‘Pain’, from my child._

_‘UNBEARABLE PAIN’, from my child._

_‘NEED TO FLEE’, my child wants to flee._

_‘NEED TO GET AWAY’, my child needs to get away._

_The I-Earth-mother roared and split the rock around her child and brought him down away from the PAIN HEARTBREAK RUN AWAY_. _I-Earth-mother enveloped their child in loving, protective darkness and carried him away under the surface away from all the pain up above. She felt his tears (like his human mother) and his blood (like his human mother) and his anguish. His surprise at their response. His gratitude towards their protection. They loved him and they would make sure the pain would go away._

_***_

From Jaskier’s perspective, it went something like this:

_All the light inside Jaskier’s body collapsed inwards. He wanted to curl up, hunch over himself, as the vacuum in his chest sucked up all the daylight and chamomile and fireside warmth that Geralt had ever given him. He ached. Oh gods, he ached. He was suddenly nothing. He was hollow and something so hollow shouldn’t hurt so much but he was gone. Jaskier’s heart wasn’t broken. He was broken._

_“See you around, Geralt.” The last air in his lungs, given away._

_He wanted to leave before the vacuum in his chest escaped and destroyed everything around him. He didn’t want Geralt, strong, stoic, asshole, Geralt to see him cry. He wanted to hold Geralt’s hand. He wanted to hold on to him and beg, ‘Can we pretend? Can we pretend for five more minutes that you still want me around? Please, give me one more moment to pretend, that might be enough to save me from where I’m going.’ He was going to cry and howl at the sky. He was going to die from the feeling inside his chest. He had to leave._

_He turned away from Geralt’s rigid back and clenched fists. He was going to cry. He had to hurry. Jaskier hadn’t taken a proper step away before he felt the rocks beneath him swell. ‘Oh,’ he thought, ‘this is new and terribly frightening.’_

_The sounds coming from the mountain below them were monstrous; it was a roar made of an avalanche beneath covers and the clacking of stone laid in a new wall. The sound flint makes striking against steel but experienced by a mite riding the steel’s edge. Jaskier could hear it better now. He could hear his Earth-mother-protector’s concern and worry and ‘I am here for you’ screaming up from the ground beneath his feet._

_“Jaskier!” Geralt was shouting again, this time with concern. Jaskier wanted to laugh until the laugh turned into the sounds of the screaming winds inside his body._

_Jaskier allowed his shoulders to drop and the tears to flow freely; his Earth-mother-shelter was here. Gently curved lengths of stone rose around him, a lattice structure, that quickly filled with sand until the world around Jaskier was blocked out, light and sound muffled._

_Jaskier dropped to his knees – too hard, he felt the skin break – and let cool embrace of his Earth-mother-shelter lull him to peace._

_***_

From Geralt’s perspective, it went something like this:

_He turned his back to Jaskier, faced into the wind to escape the bitter scent of shock and pain that was billowing from him in clouds._

_“See you around, Geralt.” The weakest Geralt had ever heard Jaskier. Even when his throat was being taken apart by the djinn, his gasps had more force behind them. These words matched the scent Geralt was already trying to forget._

_He wasn’t a particularly well socialized kind of man. He knew that. He understood that he was more feral than civilized; he was raised by a man who pumped children full of poison, surrounded by children who were as likely to die as the seasons were to change. He didn’t get to practice social skills. He learned human interaction over a hundred years with a collection of scraps gathered from aldermen, innkeepers, and the occasional whore. He practiced with Roach. He couldn’t even muster up enough emotional intelligence to tell himself that he lacked it._

_He wasn’t blessed with an excess of social graces but he could tell almost immediately that he had fucked this up and he was just (barely) self-aware enough to regret it just as quickly._

_Jaskier was loud and caused trouble and he really wasn’t as charming as everyone thought he was, so if they could just calm down and stop sticking their hands down Jaskier’s pants that’d be great, but he certainly wasn’t the cause of Geralt’s current misery (or past and future misery for that matter)._

_The mountain was moving. ‘Fuck. Is this another fucking dragon? I’m going to scream if it’s another fucking dragon. Or a rock slide? Fuck. Jaskier.’ He spun around to make sure Jaskier hadn’t already fallen over dead because Destiny wanted to punish Geralt for being a dick._

_Thank the gods, he was still there but he had his back to Geralt. The smell of his pain still covered the mountain top. Geralt’s stomach dropped when he saw fissures spreading out like an impact crater to surround his friend- yes damnit, his friend, his best friend, his only very best friend, he was such an idiot._

_“Jaskier!” Gods, please turn around, come to me, let me protect you, let me apologize._

_The sweet-salt smell of tears overwhelmed the scent of hurt. The mountain rose up around Jaskier and Jaskier stood still, why wasn’t he moving?_

_“Jaskier, move!” Geralt tried to run to Jaskier, to try and help him, but for the first time in his unnaturally long life, he tripped over a rock. He fell to his hands and knees and started crawling before he fully registered what had happened._

_He looked up, desperate to see Jaskier, but only saw a mass of rock sink into the mountain side with the sounds of thunder._

_“No, no, no!” He yelled, scrambling forward to claw frantically at the top of the earthen prison. He would get Jaskier out. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t happen._

_The shaking of the ground slowly faded away. Geralt continued to dig. If Jaskier was buried alive, he would get him out._


End file.
